Raul Gatica

I return to the Zocalo to find Cristobal and David in hopes of scoring an audience with Raul Gatica, the leader of CIPO. They are already at the CIPO office. A pickup truck rolls through the Zocalo. Juan, a campensino I met previously is riding in the flatbed. He recognizes me and tells me to get in. Raul is waiting for me.
 

Spanish is Juans second language.  He is Mixteca.  I promptly teach him all the vital English words like "toaster oven" and "hoobestank" which mean "hello" and "your stepping on my foot" in that order.
 
The thing about Raul is that he fears the paramilitaries here will kill him. He claims they have tried before. Certainly they have killed others in his organization. Thus, you cant actually ask for a specific time and place to meet him. You cant call him and the CIPO office will not tell you if he is in or not. A bit of serendipity is required. Juan in a pick up truck is mine.
 
Two white chicks are sitting in the front cab of the truck. We arrive at the CIPO house. Claire and Ciara pile out. They are students from California and travelling Mexico to meet with human rights groups. They hope to write an article on how different rights groups are structured and the success or failure those structures bring. More importantly, Claire speaks fluent Spanish which she perfected during five months in Cuba.
 
Inside the CIPO house Raul Gatica is busy preparing his people for a series of protests across the state. He will later claim that he is not the boss, merely part of the consensus building process. Still when he speaks other people listen with big eyes and then around a lot. The difference is lost on me.
 
Gatica leaves momentarily and returns calm and focused. His boyish smile and animated eyes make for a handsome face. He seems strong if not powerfully built. In poetic phrases he lays it down for us.
 
"The jails , the hospitals, and the cemetaries are filled with the indigenous. 75% (his stat) of the people suffer from malnutrition. They have diseases that have cures: disentary, smallpox, and others. The jails are filled with our people, forced to cultivate marijuana (wonder if they are forced to smoke it too). We are hungry, margianalized, and without jobs. That is where are crimes are born."
 
Gatica claims that the goverment builds highways and damns over indigenous towns without reporations, sells their communal forests to paper companies, fail to provide basic services such as clean water, electricity and schools, and generally dont include them in decisions that deeply affect their lives. Then there is the violence.
 
He brings out large photographs mounted to stiff cardboard. The first is of a dead man, his obese stomach lined with blood soaked bullet holes. The next, a pregnant woman beaten down, her baby lost. Men, they claim are paramilitaries, getting into a clearly marked police truck. The one that scares the most somehow, shows a group of men with white shirts and dark sticks (they claim machetes) amongst a crowd of panicked villagers. Behind them, a man with deranged eyes fires a machine gun into the air. There is a deep sense of panic, chaos, and fear in that photo. This is in broad daylight by the way.
 
We ask Gatica if he is afraid. "Of course I am afraid," he says. "I am afraid all the time. I am sad. I am angry. For that, I fight." But he has a strategy. Gatica doesnt go anywhere without a gringo. He says the government doesnt like shooting gringos. Mexicans are a different story. So Gatica asks for white skinned volunteers to accompany him. A few days from now, the group asks me if I would like to accompany Raul for a reunion with his people in the Zocalo. I politely refuse as I will be very busy picking lint from my belly button.
 
Regardless of my human shield status, I like Gatica. He is charming and speaks in lyrical phrases of justice and open heartedness, of the beauty of the forest and the human spirit. Its good stuff. That and some guns and he may get what we wants. But what specifically he wants is difficult to discern.
 
CIPO represents indigenous people across the state and is managing disputes in at least 28 towns. Worse, each town seems to have specific problems. In San Isidro, a forest is in dispute and peaceful organizing has been met with violence. In a town near Vera Cruz, a highway has paved over an indigenous community. In Jualtulco, an indian way of life is being transformed into mega hotels with frosty big gulp cups brimming with salty migaritas. In Tuxtapec (not sure on spelling) a hydroelectric dam put 20 communities under water. The people were moved from their original towns without electricity into other towns without electricity.
 
Generally, CIPO seems to be trying to build an indigenous protest force that can universally represent indian rights. Its sort of like the ACLU in a country that doesnt have working courts or Jewish lawyers. Gatica claims that they have taken photos documenting the killings and beatings. "We know the killers," he says. "They are from the next town over."
 
The courts have done little but the paramilitaries seem to stay busy. Just days earlier they raided a CIPO house in Jualtulco, says Gatica. And the police drove them there, he says. Seems strange to carpool to a beat down. You have your own machetes but you cant score a ride. Lame.
 
"We dont hate North Americans," he explains. Its nice of him to include Canada so the Americans arent singled out, but i get the drift. Those damn Canadians. You cant turn your back for a minute.
 
"But we do have sadness because our government robs the people here," he continues. "When the North Americans come here, much of what you have is the result of robbing our people."
 
So what does Gatica want?
 
"We are not against everything," he says. "We are against ideas that only think of money and not people. You cant eat money." Of course you arent supposed to eat people either, but i refrain.

And like that our time is up. Gatica must return to planning a week of protests, starting tomorow. I ask for access to one of the protests. For security reasons or perhaps just because they are terribly disorganized, they wont tell me which town. Regardless, the next day it is arranged that I will travel by bus to the mountain town of Tlaxiaco (pronounced however you feel like it. Its not going to be right, trust me) for a grand protest filled with vandalizing cars with people in them, taking over government offices, and kidnapping giant passenger buses. And the food was good too.
 

This is the main plaza nestled between two churches in Oaxaca City.  It is rather serene in this picture.  In a few days it will be filled with angry campensinos and then with riot police firing tear gas.  The story to come...
 

I leave you with a quote from Gatica. "Peace will not happen by luck or miracle. We must have direct action for peace and justice."